Are we making progress? Testing whether interventions to promote key health behaviors improved over the past 30 years

Findings from the present meta-synthesis indicate no improvement over time in the efficacy of interventions to promote health behavior change across 5 domains. Rapid changes in products and contexts, the paucity of behavior change trials, and evaluation practices that focus on the efficacy of individual trials rather than cumulative efficacy across trials offer potential explanations of the findings. Innovations are needed to improve intervention efficacy in future trials.